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The Monster Mash
Little did Quirk Books know when it published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith in April that the book would spawn a cottage industry.
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Wall Street Noir: PW talks with Norb Vonnegut
Norb Vonnegut's debut, Top Producers, details intricate Wall Street scams, but at heart it's about friendship and betrayal more than stocks and bonds.
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Fiction Book Reviews: 7/6/2009
Reviewed this week, new novels from Thomas Pynchon, E.L. Doctorow, William Trevor, Richard Powers, Alice Randall, Joseph Kanon, Richard North Patterson and Anita Diamant. Plus, Nick Cave chronicles the adventures of a bad seed, the return of Arturo
Pérez-Reverte's swashbuckling Diego Alariste, and Mattox Roesch sends an L.A. gangbanger to Alaska. -
Recipe Report: July 6
This week, a recipe from Gourmet Today, edited by Ruth Reichl, for Orange Raisin Scones.
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Review: Clean Food
No, this isn't a book about cleaning produce before you eat it. Rather, it's a friendly cookbook that makes (mostly) vegan cooking approachable with simple recipes and straightforward descriptions of more exotic ingredients. There’s some typical vegan fare, like seitan bourguignon or scrambled tofu, but many recipes play with expected ingredients in interesting ways: marinated tofu with ginger cashew dipping sauce; and quinoa and black bean salad with apricot lime dressing.
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Cooking the Books with Rachel Holtzman
Earlier this month, Gotham Books acquired rights to chef Grant Achatz’s memoir, Life, On the Line. Based on the proposal and Achatz’s cookbook, Alinea, the memoir won’t be a typical chef’s narrative. Rather, the book, co-written with Achatz’s business partner, Nick Kokonas, will be part autobio, part art book, and part business story. PW talks to Rachel Holtzman, who will edit Life, On the Line.
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The Cooking Star You Haven't Heard of Yet: Jaden Hair
The book jacket for The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook features a smiling photo of author Jaden Hair and a plate of noodles with shrimp and vegetables. Hair’s name appears in a script that looks like her signature, suggesting she might be famous. And then there’s the circle-within-a-circle logo in the lower left corner that looks a lot like the “As Seen on Food Network” logo that graces the covers of books by Rachael Ray, except it says, “As seen on steamykitchen.com.”
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Fancy Food Show Is BEA for Foodies
The best way to describe the Fancy Food Show to book people might be to call it a BEA for food. But that doesn’t do the event justice. The fair, held last week at the Javits Center in New York City, has more exhibitors than Book Expo: about 2,300, compared to BEA’s 1,500. And while BEA exhibitors sometimes give out samples (i.e., books), nearly every exhibitor at the Fancy Food Show gives out samples (i.e., food). BEA may be a feast for the brain, but the Fancy Food Show is a straight-up feast.
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Grand Central Acquires Out-of-Print Jackson Bio
Grand Central is stepping into the Michael Jackson fray, looking to respond to the dearth of titles currently available on the King of Pop with its acquisition of J. Randy Taraborrelli's currently-out-of-print biography on the superstar.
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Diamond’s New Minimums Shape a Tough Comics Market
Earlier this year, Diamond Comics Distributors, the dominant distributor to the roughly 3,000 store comics shop market, raised its minimum sales order and if a comic doesn’t reach the new advance minimum sales order, Diamond will not distribute it. The change sparked an immediate outcry from small comics presses, self-publishers and some retailers, who complained that the new minimum forces them out of the marketplace.
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New ICv2 Confab on Comics and Media Crossovers
Milton Griepp, longtime comics and pop culture business analyst and CEO of ICv2, a pop culture trade news website, decided to take a closer look at the powerful connections between comics, the Hollywood film industry, TV and the videogame industry and has organized the Comics and Media Conference to be held on July 22, just before preview night at the San Diego Comic-con International. The new conference will focus on the lucrative business of turning comics into other kinds of media.
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Scars and Stripes Forever: Peter Bagge’s Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me.
This July, Fantagraphics Books once more unleashes the works of best-selling Hate comics creator Peter Bagge in Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me (And Other Astute Observations), a decade’s worth of cartoon reporting for Reason magazine. Armed with a Libertarian-leaning viewpoint and his signature bemused approach to his exploration of human foibles, Bagge skewers the early-twenty-first century American zeitgeist.
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Graphic Novel Lifts Curtain on Modeling Business
Petite model Isobella Jade has already written a memoir, Almost 5’4”, and now she's written a fictional graphic novel based on her experiences in modeling. Model Life, illustrated by Jazmin Ruotolo, will be published by Soft Skull Press in October.
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Comics Briefly
Quebecor Leaves Bankruptcy; Diamond Drops Yen Press Books; Asian American Comicon; Eisner Awards iPhone; iPod App; Netcomics at San Diego; Diamond Deal; Frank Frazetta Regains Rights to Art; Transformers Comics Top iTunes; Runaways Theme Song & Video;Bluewater Michael Jackson Comic; Archaia Launches Hardcover Promotion; Prism Comics Press Grant Call; Oni; Viper; Starz Talent Search; ICv2 Confab; G4 at San Diego; and This Week @ Good Comics for Kids
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Ms. Finnegan Goes to Tokyo: The Manga Taisho Awards
I'm in Tokyo to be fitted for my zero gravity wedding dress, but that's another story. I meet up with Ed Chavez, an American-born manga translator, freelance writer and now marketing director at Vertical Inc., for the Manga Taisho Award ceremony. We're waiting outside the Nippon Housou Building with a small group of other journalists. It's cold for March in Tokyo, and the sakura (cherry blossoms) have not fully bloomed, much to my disappointment.
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Jackson Books Trickle Out
Books about Michael Jackson enter the pipeline.
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Books on Michael Jackson Gain Little Traction
While Michael Jackson singles shot up to top perches in the iTunes store over the weekend, after celebrations of the King of Pop's life took hold in the wake of his sudden death late last week, the run on MJ books has been, well, less noticeable.
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Children's Book Reviews: 6/29/2009
Reviewed this week: the latest picture book from the Emberley clan, a picture-book biography of the inventors of Day-Glo paint, new novels from Richard W. Jennings and Elizabeth Scott, as well as a round-up of concept books for younger readers.
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Men at War: PW talks with Evie Wyld
Repressed trauma trickles down through generations of Australian veterans, POWs and recluses in Evie Wyld's After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. Think Annie Proulx by way of North Queensland.
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Fiction Book Reviews: 6/29/2009
This week, reviews of new novels from James Ellroy, Jeff Lindsay, Philippa Gregory, Richard Russo and Mary B. Morrison. Plus, Dick and Felix Francis deliver another horse caper, Tilly Bagshawe channels Sidney Sheldon, senator Barbara Boxer weighs in with another Beltway thriller.
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